Digital Marketing News 10/25/2022 – 10/31/2022

PPC

TikTok Launches The Smart Performance Campaign

TikTok’s new end-to-end automation solution aims to optimize ad performance and scale campaigns.

As TikTok grows their suite of performance solutions, they also enable marketers to connect with the right audiences, drive business growth, and meet marketing objectives. Now with the launch of the Smart Performance Campaign, the newest performance suite solution, TikTok provides an even better advertising experience. 

This is TikTok’s first end-to-end automation solution that leverages machine learning to optimize for best performance and marketing goals. In order to reach the right people and maximize results, Smart Performance Campaign is designed to run performance campaigns at scale, while reducing the number of manual steps to drive results.

Getting started with a Smart Performance Campaign requires minimum effort from advertisers — all you need is a marketing objective, budget, country, and creative assets. This is a great solution for:

• New TikTok advertisers who want to test general performance with little time and effort required

• Enterprise or SMBadvertisers who do not have hands-on campaign management resources

• Highly performance-orientedadvertisers who are looking to further optimize performance

• Gaming advertisers who are launching new titles

TikTok also reported that in the early tests they conducted for app promotion campaigns, over 80% of Smart Performance Campaigns outperformed manually set up campaigns.

If you’re interested in trying out this new automation solution, Smart Performance Campaign will be globally available for Android App Promotion campaigns in the coming weeks, with more to come later this year for iOS and Website Campaigns.

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YouTube Announces New Ad Formats and Features

Reach more viewers across YouTube’s streaming, shopping, and audio platforms.

With YouTube’s long-standing reputation as a video content provider, it’s no wonder that they’ve created a unique dynamic between creators and viewers called the “halo effect,” also known as the “YouTube Effect” for brands. To help advertisers leverage the YouTube Effect to reach the right viewers and drive awareness and action, YouTube announced new ad formats and features that span across streaming, shopping, and audio.

Moment Blast This ad format is designed for brands looking to raise awareness during key moments — like major sporting events, movie releases, or product launches. Moment Blast gives advertisers prime positioning on YouTube Select content on connected TVs (CTV) and other devices, plus a Branded Title Card and optional Masthead placement.

Product Feeds Expansion to Discovery Ads Advertisers can now use product feeds on YouTube, which turns ads into a virtual storefront and makes it easier for viewers to shop what they see on videos. However, to help you scale your social media creative and reach even more engaged viewers, YouTube is also expanding product feeds to Discovery ads.

Soon, product feeds will also include local offers, allowing brands to show real-time availability for products in their Google Merchant Center so people can find the most convenient place to buy. These features will launch on November 10th.

Audio Ads and Podcast Targeting To help you reach music lovers and podcast listeners, YouTube launched Audio ads, which are now globally available to buy in Google Ads and Display & Video 360. Audio ads are designed to reach people on audio surfaces and in listening-first states.

Podcast targeting, which allows brands and agencies to specifically reach podcast listeners, is also now available globally.

With these new ad formats and features, YouTube is in a good position to help advertisers reach viewers right in the content of their choice.

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Campaigns on Google Ads Gets 3 New Results Reporting Columns

Advertisers can now view the following conversion reporting columns at the campaign level: Results, Results Value, and Conversion Goals.

Results Reporting in Google Ads highlights and explains the value and results your campaigns are delivering for the goals set up in your account. The Results Reporting columns only appear at the campaign level and consist of Results, Results Value, and Conversion Goals.

However, the “Results” column itself is currently only available to a select number of advertisers. If you have access to this feature, here’s an overview of the recommended columns in your campaign’s statistics table.

Results The “Results” column shows the number of conversions you've received across your primary conversion actions for each of the standard goals in your account. This column will display in normal font color the conversions in goals that the campaign is optimizing for. In grayed-out font, this column will display the conversions in goals that the campaign isn’t optimizing for but generating conversions.

Note that the Results column won’t show conversions grouped by a custom goal.

Results Value This column shows the calculated conversion values you've received across your primary conversion actions for each of the standard goals in your account.

Conversion Goals This column shows the goals listed in your campaign level setting that drive your campaign performance. According to Google, you can override your account-default goals and specify which goals you’d like to track in your conversion reporting and use for bidding in a particular campaign.

Your account-default goals should be applicable to most of your campaigns. But if you want to have more granular control over your conversion goals, you can visit this Help page to learn more about campaign-specific conversion goals.

You’ll be able to view Results Reporting columns in your campaign tables, charts, and filters. For more details on how Results Reporting works and how to view them, visit the Google Ads Help page.

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TikTok Introduces The Focused View Advertising Objective

Focused View optimizes your ads for users who pay attention and actively engage with ads on TikTok.

In the recently-concluded TikTok World, the global product summit for brands, TikTok introduced Focused View, the new evolution of the current video view objective on TikTok. It provides a lot of value for brands as viewership is its own form of engagement — something that’s proven by the success of TikTok’s For You page.

Focused View is a brand new advertising objective that optimizes for both video views and engagements. This optimization delivers ads to users who are most likely to actively engage with an ad — by viewing it for at least 6 seconds or by interacting with the video within the first 6 seconds (whichever comes first). Focused View also allows TikTok to optimize for two different kinds of engagement:

• Emotional engagement through content consumption: Users who are most likely to view your ad for at least six seconds are targeted.

• Tangible engagement through interaction: Users who are more likely to actively engage with an ad by liking, sharing, following, or clicking are targeted.

The 6-second Focused View ad objective is now available to advertisers globally.

Social

LinkedIn Offers Enhanced Accessibility Tools

In support of the National Disability Employment Awareness Month, LinkedIn rolls out improved video accessibility features and a new alt text function.

This October, LinkedIn released new product updates to improve accessibility for all of their 850 million members. First is the enhanced video accessibility with auto captions and high contrast. Erran Berger, LinkedIn’s VP for Engineering, announced this update:

“In the coming weeks, we’re rolling out auto captions to make video content on LinkedIn more accessible to those who are deaf, hard of hearing, or prefer to watch videos with sound off.”

When you upload a video, LinkedIn can automatically generate captions for you. For now, English is the only available language. You can choose to add the captions as soon as they’re ready, or review them before they’re published to ensure accuracy for your audience.

What you can do next:

• If you’re interested in trying out TikTok’s Smart Performance Campaign, test it with a small portion of your budget first. Make sure as well that your performance tracking is accurate and that your pixels are installed properly prior to testing.

• Improve your connection with your target audience by tailoring your message to them, using the appropriate ad format, and delivering ads on platforms that are relevant to them.

• Use the Results Reporting feature in Google Ads to consistently and accurately measure the conversions gained from your campaigns, as well as to observe the effectiveness of your conversion goals.

• Use Focused View as an ad objective in TikTok to optimize your ads. This way, you can leverage TikTok’s highly engaged community to gain more engagement and conversions from your ads.

• It’s good practice to make your publication materials and ads accessible to everyone. Take advantage of accessibility tools and features to efficiently produce content that anyone can appreciate.

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